Demons be gone!

Listening to the little Demon on your shoulder!

One innate talent that humans have is the ability to consciously know when a primal urge we are facing will impact us negatively, and to choose whether we do it and listen to the little demon on our shoulder and take the risk for a moment of instant psychological pleasure, or we have the strength to resist and not risk that negative impact as a byproduct.

The majority of these urges are related to food, sex, and anything similar. Checking your iPhone is not a primal urge, we’ve developed that ourselves! We’ve all been there where we know we shouldn’t have that cake in the fridge, we shouldn’t go out drinking for that second night in a row and yet we do it anyway and end up hungover with a pounding headache and losing gains from missing sessions! So why do we do it? The reward response in the brain – DOPAMINE.

Survival of the human race is our primary goal above anything else, and these urges below are still hardwired into our brains as the two most important things to survival:
. Finding Fast release, dense sources of energy.
. Reproduction.

Anything that relates to this gives us a reward response in the brain that in an instant gives us a dopamine release which is basically our primitive brain saying, ‘WOO YEAH GOOD JOB!’
But then on the other side of things our logical brain is saying ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ (A drug is more of a synthetic mimic of this reward response as a result of the chemical effect of the drug in use. Followed by a sharp decline in that response. Hence addicts require that continual hit. And yes, alcohol is a drug. So is caffeine.)
And so becomes cognitive dissonance where our brains internally disagree with each other:
‘I’m healthy…’
‘No you’re not you just ate a whole tub of ice cream….FML.’

So here’s what you need to do.. instead of justifying that behavioral choice with an excuse that you know is CRAP like ‘this is the last one’ you analyse your behaviour patterns, and you make the one you had before your last one!

The only way to truly cut back and cut out these bad habits is to cut back slowly and then look to limit them altogether. Let’s say you have a whole pizza in front of you. Yes, you could quite easily devour the whole thing but how about you take away 3 slices and disregard the rest (share it with someone, don’t throw it away as that is a criminal offence LOL) or simply put it out of view and eat what you have in front of you. This stops you from eating with your eyes instead eating to fill that hunger.

Once this becomes easy to do think about the toppings you are having and the type of base you have. A thin Italian base is going to contain a whole lot fewer carbs and fat than a deep pan and having chicken, peppers and pineapple are going to prove much more nutrients than pepperoni and extra cheese. Instantly just by making these small changes you will have dropped around 200-300 calories out the meal.

You should never have to completely cut out the things you love to enjoy in life but just be in control of them and have the ability to say “NO” every once in a while. You will have a much healthier relationship with food and your physical and emotional appearance if you are the one in control.